There is a popular saying in Bollywood – social welfare comes to a Bollywood actor’s life either when he is past her prime or when good offers are no longer coming up given up his way. In fact more often than not our actors are mocked for taking up social issues only as a desperate attempt to stay in news when their glory is fading and world is closing in.

But then you meet someone like Abhay Deol who is young, creative and is very much his own man. He is busy with multiple acting assignments, as well as his own production business. But despite the busy schedule and several engagements, he has time to do other things, especially things that he feels could be instrumental in bringing a notable social change. One of them is community media. And this is why the young actor was this Saturday, 23rd Jan in a slum of Chembur, Mumbai, watching films made by slumdwellers themselves. These were the slum people’s own films, their stories, told in their own language, reflecting their own thoughts, sentiments, tears and smiles.

Sitting with Abhay was Stalin K, founder member of Video Volunteers. It was Video Volunteers that had, in partnership with NGOs Akshara and Yuva, set up two community video units (CVUs), in Mumbai 3 years ago and took up the challenge of teaching slum people how to make films and use film making as a tool of self-empowerment. Now it was this very work of Video Volunteers that made Abhay decide to support the organization as an ambassador. According to Stalin, Abhay’s visit to CVU thrilled the crowd, specially the Community Video Producers. But it also thrilled Abhay himself who looked visible moved to know that the filmmakers around him were actually people who drove autorickshaws, sold vegetables on the street and did several other thankless and odd jobs to make a living, not very long ago. ‘Abhay has truly understood our ethos and work’, said Stalin to me later.

So what exactly is this ethos of Video Volunteers that someone like Abhay finds worth standing for? In Abhay’s own words, ‘In a place like India where there is a very high level of illiteracy, video and film are perfect tools to empower people….by giving communities these tools, Video Volunteers is trying to create a digital and social revolution through which the poor in India can finally make their voices heard to the mainstream media and to government.”

That this statement would come from someone who hails from the very popular and very powerful world of commercial Hindi films, where clichés have ruled for decades, provokes some interesting thoughts.

To begin with, it shows that our young actors are now ready to go beyond playing the rhetorical ‘zara hathke’ roles on screen to playing truly offbeat, impactful roles in real life. This again means, the popular belief – thinking of the society is a retired actor’s job – is slowly becoming a myth.

But the most interesting of all is perhaps the fact that an actor is now ready to see his ‘public’ switching places, becoming a storyteller and accept it as a natural and need-of-the-hour transition. And this is where Abhay and Video Volunteers think alike!